Ovaltine
by TolkienGirl
Summary: Beer isn't the only beverage that has a history for the Winchesters. Four short scenes-Wee!Chester, Teen!Chester, Stanford, and Season One. Sick!Sam, Big Brother!Dean. Some angst, some fluff. General feels. Not even an atom of slash. Rating for the mildest of language and Deannuendoes.


**A/N: Okay, I don't even know what this is. I just…I like Ovaltine, OK? And I like making up head-canons. And so this happened, and I'm having too many feels to apologize. NO REGRETS. Anyway, I hope you enjoy it, or that you can connect to it in some way…and if you can't that's fine too. Just drop a few lines in a review, if you're feeling generous. They make my day. :)**

**Disclaimer: I own nothing but feels. And sometimes they're so out of control I don't even know if I own them anymore.**

_XXX 1984 XXX_

It's only after there's a mound of fine, chocolate-colored powder cascading over the countertop and floating towards the floor that Dean realizes that this might have been a Bad Idea. He hadn't known that the top would be so hard to get off, or that the jar was full—

He feels a lump tighten in his throat, like he tried to drink the powder without putting any milk in it, and he wishes someone (_Mommy_) was here to sweep it up and then sweep _him_ into her arms and laugh and say that it doesn't matter.

But Mommy is gone, and word rings in his mind like a fire alarm, chokes his breath like smoke, hurts his eyes like the flames that wreathed across the ceiling.

Dean swallows again, swallows down the lump. Because he can't think of all that, not now, not when he has Duties. Duties as a big brother. He's had those Duties for two calendar pages now, though he only knows that because he saw Pastor Jim change them.

Daddy doesn't touch the calendar anymore.

_Duties_. That's how this mess got started. Because Sammy was crying and crying and Daddy went outside with a muttered Bad Word and a tight, hard look in his eyes that was a little like crying too somehow. And it's up to Dean to make Sammy better, and Mommy always made Ovaltine for Dean when he cried, and—

But now it's spilled all over the counter. Like snow, 'cept it's brown. Snow gets brown too when the rain comes and mixes it up with the mud. But Ovaltine tastes a lot better than mud. Dean knows.

The good taste would have made Sammy stop crying, but now it's ruined. Maybe Sammy won't _ever_ stop crying.

Except…he has.

His eyes are round and unblinking, watching Dean from his crib, watching the powder settle in the fissures of the countertop, and then a bubbly little laugh gurgles up in his baby throat and he laughs and laughs.

And even though Daddy's awful mad when he gets back, because the kitchen is messy and the Ovaltine is all gone, Dean isn't sad at all. Because Mommy was right about Ovaltine.

Mommy was right about everything.

Dean just wishes she was here, too.

_XXX 1995 XXX_

Sam hates sore throats. Sure, Dean swears they're not as bad as stomach bugs, but then, Sam isn't as invested as Dean is in the whole food thing, and the problem with sore throats is that they make his whole mouth and sinuses feel just…disgusting.

_Repulsive._

_Repugnant._

_Vile._

He finds some solace in running through his vocabulary defining the unpleasant, but it's brought back around to misery again when he realizes that he could actually _say_ these fascinating words if his throat wasn't swollen and dry.

It's been a long day…Dad had taken one look at him this morning and told him to stay home from school for the day. For Sam, that doesn't offer much comfort. He likes his classes, a fact that seems to baffle both his father and his brother.

He picks at the blanket dejectedly and wishes that he'll never have to be in another hotel room as long as he lives.

At least, not alone.

But Dad's on a hunt—Sam wasn't sick enough to stop that, apparently—and Dean is supposedly studying and is probably (_actually_) "making out" at Cindy Taylor's house.

Sam has only added the concept of "making out" to his vocabulary recently, and quite reluctantly. Dean assures him that this will change, but all the girls that Sam knows are kind of…vile.

Like his throat.

_"That's because you're all twelve, dude," _Dean had said when asked, with a knowing look. _"Just wait. Six months. A year, tops."_

_Whatever_. Sam tosses in the sticky sheets and presses his aching face into the pillow. He knows that Dean is kind of breaking a rule, staying out after school, but Sam doesn't want to be the burden on his brother's shoulders forever. It's not like he's going to tattle.

He just…wishes Dean was here. Because Dean, for all the bragging and the girls and the loud music, is the only one who sets the pillows just right, whose hands are cool and deft at changing damp washcloths for foreheads and measuring out cough syrup and even smoothing out bedraggled hair when he thinks Sam is asleep.

But that all can't last forever. All that sort of babying can't last forever, and lately Sam's decided he doesn't want it to, because it's recently occurred to him that it isn't really fair…there's nobody to do it for Dean.

Not that Dean ever says as much. Most of the time, it's hard to tell if he's missing anything. But Sam _knows_. He knows because last time Dean was sick—with a nasty, feverish bout of the flu—Sam saw his sweat-dampened hand clenched tight around his old leather wallet, and that wouldn't have made any sense except that Sam remembers that that's where Dean keeps his pictures of Mom.

_Mom._ If Sam squeezes his eyes shut and pretends, he can imagine a soft hand resting against his forehead, lifting a refreshing drink to his cracked lips, a motherly voice whispering little reassurances in his ear.

But the only hand he knows is long-fingered and calloused, and the only voice he knows is Dean's.

Maybe that means that he's deprived. But he's never felt that way, not when Dean's hunched up on the other bed, all cocky smirk and thoughtful eyes and tattered jeans, telling him not to be a girl in one breath and asking if he wants more tea in the next.

Sam just wishes Dean was here, too.

The room is very quiet. Just a faint ticking in the heater—_probably a trapped roach_, Sam thinks…too weary to be revolted…and footsteps down the hall.

The footsteps are coming closer.

Sam shifts, moving one hand under his pillow towards the knife that's concealed there. He knows that Dad—and Dean—wouldn't leave the room unprotected, but he's sick (and just a little scared but nobody needs to know that, not even himself) and…

There's a jangle of keys, and the knob rattles—and he knows that rattle.

He feels every inch of his stiff body relax.

It's Dean.

"Hey Tiger, you look like crap," is about as nice a greeting as he gets, but it makes Sam feel warm inside, in a cozy way rather than a feverish one.

"Dean!" It's little more than a croak. "Dean, you came."

Dean sets down the grocery bag he's got draped over his arm and looks slightly affronted. "You sound surprised."

Sam presses the heels of his hands against his eyes. Thinking hurts a bit, though everything hurts less now that Dean's come in. "But what about Cindy—"

There's a mournful sigh. "I just told her that I had a wussy kid brother. Believe me, it wasn't easy. Her parents were out of town for the evening and _everything_." Dean waggles his eyebrows like that's supposed to mean something.

"So?"

"Dude, that's like, the _golden opportunity_."

Sam files away the fact that parents must not be too keen on the "making out" thing either, although they're not twelve. It's all so complicated. "Oh."

"Which leads me to my point," Dean continues, kicking off his boots and adding them to the rumpled heap of clothes at the foot of his bed. "I win the Best-Brother-Ever award for skipping out on _that_."

Usually, Sam would have some sort of deprecating comeback—which, for being twelve, he thinks he's pretty good at—but he's sick and he's tired and he's _safe_ because Dean is _here_. So he just squeezes his eyes shut because the light hurts them and says, "You already are the best brother."

If he'd opened his eyes then he would have seen Dean's soften. But when Sam looks up again Dean is futzing with something in the junky cooler that they use as a pseudo-fridge.

"Watcha doin'?" Sam queries groggily.

"It's a surprise," Dean informs him, a grin quirking the corner of his mouth. "Don't hurt your brain, nerd-boy. I won't make you wait long."

"It's not my brain that hurts," Sam informs him, wincing. He's made the mistake of swallowing again. "It's my darn throat."

"Darn?" Dean chuckles. "When are you going to start swearing like a man? Are we in what, seventh grade?" He pauses meditatively. "Actually, you are."

"Eighth," Sam corrects. "I'm ahead."

Dean snorts. "'Course you are. Freaking brainiac."

Sam hears the _clink, clink_ of a spoon hitting glass (stirring?) and cranes his neck to see what Dean's doing.

"Wha—" But Dean is already coming to sit down beside him, on the edge of the bed.

"Shush. You'll hurt your throat, and I don't want to put up with your whining." The tone—almost gentle—belies the words, and the hand that quickly soothes his forehead is gentler still. Sam feels something pressed into his hand, a glass.

"Ovaltine?" he asks, in disbelief, and Dean nods.

"Picked some up on the way home."

It crosses Sam's mind that sugar and dairy should be avoided when one is congested, but he can't bring himself to say it and he doesn't really want to. He presses the glass to his lip and sips, and it's cold and sweet and familiar—and he remembers all the times before in his life when Ovaltine has been the answer…when he's hurt or sick or Dad yells or they have to pick up everything and nothing and move on to the next motel. Perhaps he shouldn't like it as much as he does, since it's associated with so many bad memories, but he feels exactly the opposite—it comforts him, because through the good and the bad it's a constant, because—

Because Dean is. Dean is _always_ there when things go bad, with a quip and a look and a glass of Ovaltine, reassuring Sam in the only way he knows how, because nobody in a long time has taught him how to say "I love you" in words.

Sam doesn't need it in words. The Ovaltine's enough.

_XXX 2002 XXX_

He scrolls through his contacts for the fifth time and restrains himself from hurling his phone at the wall. It wasn't cheap, after all, and college students have to budget.

That's what he is now. A college student.

And it's his brother's birthday.

Sam sighs, and closes his eyes. He…keeps _meaning_ to call, but last time he saw his brother, Dean was growing smaller and smaller in the rear-view mirror of a Greyhound bus, and for some reason the thought of reconnecting makes the phone feel like a lead weight in his hand (_in his heart_).

He hears the door of the apartment swing open, the sound of Jess's light steps. "Hey, babe?"

"Yeah?"

She's doing something in the kitchen. "You want some Ovaltine? I just got some, and you've been going on about it—"

The room seems to still for a moment, even though nothing in it had been moving. Sam tastes ashes in his mouth without knowing why, and he's transported back far more vividly than he wants to be—_"Picked some up on the way home"…_

He presses the heels of his hands against his eyes, because they're stinging, and he'd give anything to keep himself from admitting that he's dangerously close to tearing up.

"No, Jess," he says at last. "I don't want any Ovaltine."

It hurts. _He_ hurts.

Just this time, the pain's not in his throat.

_XXX 2006 XXX_

Sam loves his brother, but sometimes Dean is _loud._ Maybe it's just Sam, though, and his head—which feels really…thick this evening, and yet at the same time, kind of brittle. Every sound hurts.

He swallows tentatively, testing himself—and sure enough, it burns.

_Great. Just freakin' great._ He's getting sick.

"Dude, let me tell you what, that waitress back at Poughkeepsie could serve up a _lot_ more than coffee," his brother says, shaking his head with a typical expression of gleeful disbelief.

Sam gazes at him in bleary horror. "Man, please. I do _not_ want to continue that line of conversation."

Dean shrugs. "Your loss, Sammy. I gave you a couple seconds to make the first move, but you were more interested in that salad contraption that you chose to call lunch. Seriously, man, it's rabbit food. It's—" he stops short. "Sammy? You Ok?"

"Throat," Sam manages, sinking back against one of the spare, creaking motel beds. "I think…I've been feeling a bit run down, since the poltergeist last week."

Dean eyes him with an appraising glance, all thoughts of the waitress gone. "Yeah, it was kind of cold and clammy in that basement."

"You're telling me."

"Dude, this sucks," Dean says, and Sam knows without asking that it's concern for his health, not annoyance over the inconvenience. He hears Dean digging through their luggage and then the familiar sound of stirring.

Sam opens his eyes. "Dean, are you making—Ovaltine?"

"Hope you don't mind drinking out of the container," Dean remarks, handing it to him with a crooked grin. "It's all we've got for cups."

Sam takes it, turning it in his hand. It's been so long…

"You still like it when you're sick, right?" Dean asks. The inquiry sounds nonchalant, but Sam can see—as maybe nobody else can (_except Dad, who can but won't_) the curious layer of uncertainty behind his brother's eyes. It's always there, if you know where to look for it. Sam does, because he knows the why behind the what…knows that Dean is uncertain because he never had anything to go off of but his own judgment and his four-year-old memories of what parents were supposed to do, what families were supposed to look like.

Sometimes he wonders how long it's been that Dean was the one taking care of him—but there's no point in wondering, because of course it's been since _always_…it's just that Dean never brings it up and it means too much to Sam to ask questions.

So he smiles, despite his throat, and says "Of course." And later, when the Ovaltine is gone and the uncertainty has faded from Dean's eyes, Sam waits for the press of a cool and soothing hand against his hot forehead.

(_He pretends to be asleep_).


End file.
